piano

学知识更练口齿的哦---Piano

Musicians are said to have better language skills. 据说音乐家拥有较好的语言表达能力。

And scientific studies have backed that up. 而科学研究也证实了这一理论，

]But it's not clear why that might be the case. 不过对于音乐为何会激发语言能力，这一点还不清楚。

Now a study of 74 Chinese kindergartners suggests six months of piano lessons can heighten the brain's response to changes in pitch. 现在一项针对74名中国幼儿园小朋友的研究表明，六个月的钢琴课会提高大脑对音高变化的反应能力。

And kids who got piano lessons were also better at telling apart two similar-sounding Mandarin words, which contained different consonants, 而这些上过钢琴课的小孩，在分辨两个发音类似、但词语中包含不同声母的中文词语方面，

than were students who got extra reading training, or who just went through regular kindergarten. 比那些接受过额外阅读训练的学生或者上普通幼儿园的学生做得更好。

The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 这项研究结果发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上

Mandarin is a tonal language - the famous example is the word 'ma' which can mean mother or horse depending on its pitch. 普通话是一门声调语言，最有名的例子是“ma”这个音的意思可能是“妈”还是“马”都是由声调来决定的。

So might musical training translate better to Mandarin, than it would to English?那么，音乐训练对学习中文的帮助比对学英语的帮助要大？

Yeah it's possible that influenced the results. “是的，结果很可能是那样。”

Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at the McGovern Institute at MIT. 麻省理工学院麦戈文研究所的神经学家罗伯特?德西蒙表示到。

But he says other studies do back up the fact that music lessons benefit language learners, even in countries without tonal languages. 他说，但是其它研究也证实了一个事实，即：音乐课对语言学习者有益，甚至对不是声调语言的国家（的学生）也有益。

[01:06.51]"And what our study added on top of that was some idea of the neural basis for those benefits. "“除此以外，对于这些益处，我们的研究补充了一些关于神经基础方面的概念。”

And if you don't own a piano, don't despair. 还有，如果你没有钢琴，也不要绝望。

The reading group actually did just as good on many measures as the piano group. 接受阅读训练的小组在语言方面，几乎和上钢琴课的学生表现得一样出色。

"Reading's pretty good actually. “阅读实际上非常好。

We don't mean to downplay reading instruction. "我们并没有要贬低阅读教学的意思。”

More important, he says, was to show piano wasn't worse than reading for these skills...他说，（我们）更重要的是展示钢琴课并不比阅读等技能差，

perhaps encouraging cash-strapped schools to keep their music programs alive. 或许是想劝告那些资金紧张的学校别舍弃他们的音乐课程。